Sunday, February 1, 2009

First All-Grain Brew – ESB

For my first foray into All-Grain brewing, I decided to make a classic English style and brew up an ESB. This beer was brewed January 14, 2009.

The grain bill was fairly simple, 9.5lbs of Maris Otter and ~1lb of Crystal Malt (60L and 20L). Based upon Beersmith, this should put it right in the color range for an ESB, and be somewhat high on the gravity, but in style.

The Hop plan was to go with a combination of Fuggles, and EKG to have that traditional English flavor. Unfortunately the local Homebrew shop had no Fuggles. I ended up going with Warrior instead, since 1oz had more IBUs than 2oz of Fuggles. I ended up only needing 0.7oz for bittering, and I threw in the extra 0.3oz at the end with the EKG

The brew session did not go as smoothly as planned. :( The plan was to use my 10-gal cooler as the mashtun, and slowly fly sparge using the other cooler as the hot liquor tank. Unfortunately, the HLT that had not leaked with cold water decided it would let water get everywhere when filled at 170F.

Couple the leaky HLT with misremembering how full to fill the kettle, and you end up with a finishing volume of ~3.5 gallons. In addition to the low volume, the gravity was on the high side at 1.065. I added one gallon of filtered tap water, pitched the yeast, and hoped for the best.

First sample – January 31, 2009I moved this beer to secondary last night to make room on its yeast cake for a Barleywine, and had a chance to give it a try. This beer finished lower than any of my other beers to date, 1.010, and tasted great! It had a nice amber color, and a good long bitterness. I can't wait to taste it when it is carbed.